Six Australians, one leaky boat, one Kenyan refugee camp, three bullet-proof jackets, one US armed forces Hercules transport plane, one excursion in an armoured vehicle through Baghdad’s notorious Red Zone – just some of the elements that made SBS’s Go Back to Where You Came From one of the most compelling documentaries ever on Australian television.

“It’s very rare that you get to make something that can impact on a really important national debate,” says English-born Peter Newman, 36, SBS’s former production and development boss, who commissioned the bold, strongly rating series.

“I’m not sure shows like this come along in your career very often, where it kind of transcends television.”

Jacinta Green

Anti-coal-seam-gas-mining activist

In less than a year, marine ecologist Jacinta Green has become the face of Sydney’s anti-coal-seam-gas-mining campaign. In November 2010, Green was one of three dozen or so anxious St Peters residents who met at the Town & Country pub after a town hall meeting about a mining company’s plans for exploratory drilling in their neighbourhood.

“The more I found out about it, the more horrified I became,” says Green, 41, a University of NSW research assistant.

The pub gathering spawned Stop CSG Sydney. As the movement’s spokesperson and the vicepresident of the Lock the Gate Alliance, Green is proud that both groups have made a huge impact on the debate.

We’ve got people back to loving their club. They’re proud to wear the colours and I think for a period of time that wasn’t the case.

Dart Energy has postponed drilling in the area while it examines options elsewhere. “This is bigger than St Peters; it’s bigger than ‘not in my backyard’ … and someone has to stop it.”

Tony Abbott

Leader of the Opposition

When Tony Abbott, 54, packs his Speedos for his Christmas break, he’s likely to look back on 2011 with some sense of achievement – while drawing up a to-do list.

The Coalition can still boast about its election-winning lead over Labor in the polls but the Opposition Leader may be nervous; with royal and presidential visitors, Julia Gillard has looked distinctly prime ministerial and is now more popular than her rival as preferred prime minister. There are also rumblings of dissent in Coalition ranks about Abbott’s pledge to abolish the mining tax if elected. And some are saying that his bovver-boot style is wearing thin.

Gripped by the 1960s television courtroom dramatisation Consider Your Verdict, a 12-year-old Mark Robinson determined that he would become a barrister. His enthusiasm for the law, and particularly administrative law (he is the author of a definitive two-volume work on the subject) has never waned.

Robinson, who was admitted as a senior counsel in October, won one of the largest administrative law class actions in history in the High Court in 2002 when he acted for thousands of refugees found to have been denied natural justice in their dealings with the Refugee Review Tribunal. In June, the 52-year-old advocate convinced a full bench of the High Court to overturn NSW state government anti-bikie laws on the basis that they could impinge individual freedoms.

“I’ve protected people from unlawful practices, I’ve assisted in having legislation stop its operation in NSW; it doesn’t get a lot better than that,” says Robinson.

Fiona Byrne

Marrickville councillor

When Greens-led Marrickville Council expressed in-principle support for a global boycott against Israel, senior federal government minister Anthony Albanese accused the council of self-indulgence. But Mayor Fiona Byrne, the public face of the move to highlight the plight of Palestinian people, has no regrets.

“People are actually discussing some pretty key issues that maybe wouldn’t have got on the agenda apart from the fact that there was … intense media scrutiny around those issues,” says Byrne, 39, who did not recontest the mayoralty in September.

The single mother of three girls — aged eight, six and three — is now working in the electorate office of Balmain Greens MP Jamie Parker. “It’s that engagement with the community and trying to drive outcomes and resolutions for the local community — that’s where my passion is.”

Anna Funder

Author

Anna Funder, a writer driven to illuminate people and their motivations, heroic or horrifying, is no stranger to success. Her first book, the bestselling Stasiland, was translated into 16 languages and won the UK’s most prestigious award for non-fiction, the Samuel Johnson Prize.

And since the former international human rights lawyer’s second book, the novel All That I Am, was released in September, it has also grabbed a spot on best-seller lists. Focusing on a group of exiled left-wing German activists opposing Hitler’s rise, the novel is also a story about Sydney – character Ruth Becker recalls her past from her flat in Rose Bay.

“I wanted to write about Sydney because I love Sydney,” says Glebe-based Funder, 45, who has been moved by the reader response to her books. “I must have got something right to tap into things that other people recognise so deeply."

Todd Greenberg

CEO, Bulldogs RLFC

“I’m not planning on driving across the Spit Bridge any time soon, that’s for sure,” says Bulldogs boss Todd Greenberg, 40, the NRL’s youngest-ever CEO.

Greenberg’s triumph in snatching dual-premiership-winning coach Des Hasler from rivals Manly in November confirms his position as one of league’s shrewdest leaders. Since taking the helm in 2008, the former Stadium Australia events and operations manager has steered the Bulldogs’ remarkable turnaround from a scandal-ridden outfit to a disciplined, family-friendly club.

“We’ve got people back to loving their club. They’re proud to wear the colours and I think for a period of time that wasn’t the case.”

Lachlan Murdoch

Acting CEO, Network Ten

As his father and brother continue to shift uncomfortably in the glare of the phone-hacking spotlight, Lachlan Murdoch can look back with a little more satisfaction at his own year of milestones – he became a television executive and turned 40.

After picking up half his buddy James Packer’s 17.9 per cent stake in Network Ten in November 2010, he took on the role of interim chief executive of Ten in February. In the months since, Murdoch has driven a tough strategic review of operations, seen off a NSW Supreme Court damages suit resulting from the One.Tel collapse and continued to steer his DMG Radio, owner of Nova FM.

But he’s not immune from the critical spotlight: questions are being asked about the slump in Ten’s share price and profits during his tenure.

Alex Perry

Fashion designer

At fashion college in 1982, the first outfit Alex Perry designed was “a pair of red, MC Hammer kind of joddies” with an asymmetrical blue and yellow top and red patent-leather heels. Stylistically, it might not have presaged the designer’s future but it might have said something about the success that lay ahead – he got an A for it.

Three decades on, Perry, 48, presides over a brand with an annual turnover of about $4 million and has ambassadorships with companies including SpecSavers.

“To literally have nothing and then to create a brand … for me that’s a real achievement,” says Perry, who is also a mentor on Project Runway Australia and a controversial judge on Australia’s Next Top Model. On that show in September he told a size-8 model that she looked like “overstuffed luggage”.

Natalie Tran

Video blogger

So, you know how sometimes you awkwardly touch someone and it’s embarrassing but nobody says anything? Or how people can write the most arsehole things, as long as they follow it up with “LOL”? Or when you’re with someone and you accidentally drool?

Such scenarios are rich material for the outrageously successful and eccentric videos Natalie Tran makes and posts on YouTube under the name “communitychannel”. The video blogger’s numbers are enough to give network television executives sleepless nights about the future might of online broadcasters.

Three years ago, Tran uploaded a video she called How to Fake a Six Pack. It has now been viewed more than 34 million times. One dubbed Googlemaps Breakup, in which she buys a GPS system, has been seen more than 2.2 million times since it was posted in April.

Such figures add up to a more than respectable income for the 25-year-old, the most-subscribed-to Australian on YouTube with nearly 1.1 million subscribers and more than 400 million upload views. Some reports have claimed she earns in excess of $100,000 a year through YouTube’s Partner Program, although Tran rejects this figure and points out that in the months she chooses not to work, she doesn’t earn anything.

When working solidly, Tran posts a video every two or three days – by the time she’s written a script, filmed it (including changing clothes to play different characters) and edited it, each takes about 20 hours to produce.

And ideas, she says, aren’t easy to come by. “Because everything’s been talked about before, because I talk about such mundane things,” says Tran, whose clever, often self-deprecating videos include monologues and skits in which she plays herself and other characters (even sometimes her own lesbian love interest). “There’s a fine line between what people want to see you talk about and expand on, and what should have just been left as a fleeting thought.”

The seeds of Tran’s observational humour seem to lie in her western Sydney childhood with her Vietnamese refugee parents. Bath-tubs and plugholes, Hills Hoists, all the stuff of Australian suburbia, were objects of curiosity and amusement. “It was fun growing up with my parents because there were a lot of different observations drawn, like, ‘Isn’t it funny how …?’ because they weren’t used to things and they were adjusting.”

Now, in an audience reversal, Tran’s parents watch her commentary on life’s oddities. “My mum often calls up and says, ‘So, I watched your last video. What was the joke?’ and she’ll go, ‘You should have brushed your hair a bit more.’ People on TV have nice hair.”

Tran spent two years studying teaching at UNSW but dropped out after teachers told her not to “become a martyr to the public education system”. She’d read about the “Lonely Girl” phenomenon — a series of YouTube videos posted by a purportedly real teenager, “lonelygirl15”, that were later revealed to be fictional. Inspired by the story, in September 2006, Tran signed up and made her first video.

In the years since, she has produced hundreds of videos, studied digital media at UNSW, travelled to the Maldives, Singapore, Dubai, Egypt, Jordan, Paris and Buenos Aires producing videos for Lonely Planet, won awards (and was the runner-up in Miss YouTube 2009), played bit parts in a couple of films and been invited to speak at conventions and launches around the world. She has also invested in a better camera to replace the webcam she used when she started. Nevertheless, Tran wants her videos to retain their “home grown” style – the filming is far from perfect and locations range from a messy bedroom to a daggy kitchen. And the suburbs have drawn the unpretentious video blogger back.

She now lives in Sydney’s south, although she won’t say where because in the past her fame has brought uninvited guests to her doorstep. “I just think they overstep without realising,” says Tran, who can’t go too far without being recognised and has made a feature on her clips of the countless snaps people have taken with her when she’s out and about.

“I’m a suburbs girl, I like the suburbs … I guess I think it’s an important part of Sydney and the obsession of moving into the city is probably going to be our downfall and people not being willing to move out of the city is probably going to be a big problem for us.”

Can she read the tea leaves some more? “You know, when Australia complains about boat people, and when Kim Kardashian’s wedding is bigger than a boat sinking, I don’t know where Australia is,” she says. “I love Australia but it confuses me a lot sometimes. I look around me and go, ‘Who are these people?’ ” Another idea for communitychannel perhaps? Stay tuned.

To find out who else made the list of Sydney's top 100 most influential people, pick up a copy of the(sydney)magazine with the Herald today.